Senator Barack Obama, on his first and likely only overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has remade the campaign’s foreign policy playing field, neatly sidestepping Republican charges that he has been naive and wrong on Iraq and moving to a broader, post-Iraq focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In essence, Obama has declared the war in Iraq all but over. “There is security progress,” he said during Tuesday’s news conference in Amman, Jordan. “Now we need a political solution.” While a diminished US force under his presidency would continue to protect US personnel, target terrorists and provide training, he said, it would be up to Baghdad to consolidate the victory by “setting up a government that is working for the people.”

Two days spent in Afghanistan and two days in Iraq, Obama said, reinforced his belief that it is time for the United States to move on. Calling the situation in Afghanistan “perilous and urgent”, he said both US military and Afghan government officials agree that “we must act now to reverse a deteriorating situation”.

Obama’s analysis has been buttressed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders who, to the dismay of the White House and Senator John McCain, his Republican opponent, have publicly agreed with his call for completing a US combat withdrawal from Iraq in 2010.

McCain argues that the United States is succeeding in Iraq — although the war is still not over — because of last year’s “surge”of US troops, which Obama opposed. McCain’s aides and surrogates continued that theme on Tueaday, accusing Obama of what Rep Heather A Wilson called “a complete inability to acknowledge that the surge worked”.

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